Confessions of an addict

I have to confess - I love elections. The first one, that excited my interest, was the 1970 General Election. I was ten years old! My father took me to a number of election meetings. I met & got the autograph of Roy Jenkins (Chancellor of the Exchequer & former Home Secretary). I also met George Brown (Deputy Leader of the Labour Party & former Foreign Secretary), who refused to sign my autograph book - he lost his seat days later!!!

In 1974 I became actively involved - handing out leaflets for Geoff Edge; and cutting up a copy of the electoral register to glue onto cards for use on election day. (How I appreciate computer printouts now!). At the Walsall North by-election I did my first door-to-door canvassing. Subsequently I ran for the Westminster Parliament, twice - and the European Parliament - as well as running for council (even being elected to Northamptonshire County Council).

US elections have fascinated me since 1972. I have flown over to Virginia for the 2004; 2008 and 2010 Elections. As an academic I have presented papers on the 1974 congressional elections. I have quite a library on US and UK elections - as well as practical and academic books on political marketing and elections. I also have Le Monde's results for French elections going back a number of years!!!

Thanks to reprints, the "The Making of the President" series  is once again available.

How good are the pundits?

Political coverage (and sports; and entertainment....) is increasingly dominated by "pundits" - people who give their "analysis" of events. They trade on an aura of expertise - but are they any good? I am a listener to the podcast by WNYC "On the Media". In their latest  podcast they feature a piece on holding pundits to account for their predictions.

The website that was featured is pundittracker - http://blog.pundittracker.com/. It goes live this spring, but in the meantime features a blog. It is not limited to the political pundits, but looks at those who make predictions about sport; the Oscars; and finance. It uses statistics to get a picture about performance. We are now accustomed to the words of politicians coming under the microscope with such websites as FactCheck - but now the pundits themselves can be checked. Not a bad thing when "framing the debate" is often more important than the details of the issues.

Election

Today is election (and referendum day) in Britain - so I thought I'd share this video with you



I'm your top prime cut of meat, I'm your choice
I wanna be elected
I'm your yankee doodle dandy in a gold Rolls Royce
I wanna be elected

Kids want a savior, don't need a fake
I wanna be elected
We're gonna rock to the rules that I make
I wanna be elected, elected, elected

I never lied to you, I've always been cool
I wanna be elected
I gotta get the vote, and I told you about school
I wanna be elected, elected, elected

Hallelujah, I wanna be elected
Everyone in the United States of America
We're gonna win this one, take the country by storm
We're gonna be elected

You and me together, young and strong
We're gonna be elected, elected, elected
Respected, selected, call collected
I wanna be elected, elected

(note: this was a bit of fun - heavily ironic)